Spotify Bleeding From Licensing Costs

Spotify has just published its financial results for 2009, and the European streaming music service is bleeding fast. Spotify may have users “by the balls” (in the words of original Napster founder and Spotify investor Sean Parker), but content owners have Spotify in an even tighter grip. According to the financial statements for U.K.parent organization Spotify Limited, published on Music Ally this morning, the company booked 11.32 million pounds in revenue during the year. About 60% of that money comes from its 250,000 paying subscribers. The rest comes from advertisements that Spotify shows to the vast majority of its 7 million users who use the free Web-only version of the service.